Just Reprocessed Emerson

There’s a lot I’ve been thinking about and working on while I’ve neglected this blog, including three entries, all about “serious” issues (more Dawkins, gay marriage in the US, and theology, probably) but I’ve also been thinking (as I grow uncomfortably more aware of my impending graduation from college) about more practical things, I guess you could call them. Something along these lines came to me, clunky words, perhaps, that have been said before. I think I wonder, in vain, if reiterating words will make them more potent, but I guess the more ways something gets said, the more possibilities there are for more and different kinds of people to key in.

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After a great deal of different kinds of writing, I found that I’ve penned my best words when I wasn’t trying to write particularly well, but instead, just writing what I was honestly thinking, the words that were in my mind, lingering on the tip of my tongue. Writing freely into my journals, with no editors, no readers, I found the most honest words I had ever written, and in that, some of the most powerful. Reflecting on it, it may come as some surprise to us who grew up surrounded by quotes and sayings that those men and women of powerful prose were people writing not for the sake of writing, writing not to “look smart”, living life with no thought to its being scrutinized, but simply and honestly, recording the deep and unshakeable convictions which came, unavoidably, over the horizons of their minds.

If I had to guess, I would say that something about our generation, about this whole age, is one that is overly self-reflective. We learn, from studying and objectifying the successes of those who came before us historically, that we are studied and objectified, that because we will be scrutinized we must live our lives accordingly, and so we reach for success like a wooing girl, who flaunts and poses her beauty because someone is watching, and she knows this, but pretends she does not. It is all a lie, of course; she wants to pretend to be caught alone, in a moment of fake honestly, so that her admirer will see her “as she is.” But the admirer does not see the real her; only the pretend girl, and in that sense, sees only her pretend beauty. She is like quantum trickery, shifting and changing because she knows we are watching. We are like that, as a generation: we are always trying, acting, pretending, putting on the airs and appearances of, but our insides never show, our authentic selves so rarely come out to grace the world with the beauty of a true thing, a thing as it really is. We have become so caught up in the science of making that we are never doing. We are forever attempting success, trying to achieve the things that life has to offer us because of the expectations around us, because we want to be caught in the eyes of another and seen as something, some persona, some outer mask with which we can be associated. We try for things, and wonder why don’t achieve them. Try and catch all the water, and it will only slip through your fingers. But let it go, and you have the whole of it as your swimming pool.

How many times has a teacher or parent echoed dimly, “just be yourself”? So often that it has begun to ring hollow and ragged. Yes, that IS the immortal secret: do all that is written on your heart to do and you will achieve greatness, “speak your latent conviction and it shall be the universe sense.” But like everything in this age, we have but a part of the secret: we have information, but no wisdom; we have concepts, but no understanding; we have knowledge, but no conviction. “Be yourself,” they say, and not a word follows afterwords about how to do this, or even to explain what yourself is, or why such a thing is desirable in the first place.

It came to me when I was reading the introduction to the Complete Sherlock Holmes. Christopher Morley wrote of the series’ magnificent author, “What other man led a fuller and heartier and more masculine life? Doctor, whaler, athlete, writer, speculator, dramatist, historian, war correspondent, spiritualist…big in every way, his virtues had always something of the fresh vigor of the amateur, keen, open-minded, flexible, imaginative…that brave and energetic lover of life.” That last part stuck with me, that brave and energetic lover of life. Suddenly there was conjured into my mind not a man who sat and fretted and fussed about what he would do, and how, and why; not a man looking at himself, but a man looking at the world, and seeing in it all the delights of his heart, took no look at himself to judge his ability or worthiness, but simply went off and did, spurred by nothing but his great enthusiasm, forgetting himself (I imagine) altogether in the living of his life rather than the waking analysis upon it.

So take the things that rest powerfully upon your heart and go forth and do them, achieve them, make them, grow, design, build, learn, write, teach, found. Do it, do it now; don’t think of what others will think, even though we do, we do always, but forget those others, and forget yourself; do not dwell on selves; and do not dwell on failure. You will meet it soon enough! We all stumble and fall, sometimes we fall in great pits in the ground and it takes many years to climb out, but there are so many more years. Failure is inevitable, so it is not something we should spend much time thinking about beforehand. Perseverance, however, is not, and so we must foster such a virtue endlessly; little else will serve us so well and for so long.

This is the question that should now be dwelling in your mind: what is it that is in your heart to do? Reach for it; it waits for you.

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One Response

Wow, that was great. And I have to say, that reading this post actually helped me a little bit with some of my struggles. I will now work on being who I am to the world. Accepting failure, and rejecting the opinions of obscenely critical people. Slowly removing the facade that has been attached to my ego, I will start to show a more authentic version of who I am.